


you were only waiting for this moment

by arestlesswind



Series: chasing the constellations (Petra Quill) [2]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alien Culture, Alternate Universe - Race Changes, Background Relationships, F/M, Female Character of Color, Fluff and Angst, Idiots in Love, Interspecies Romance, Older Man/Younger Woman, Pre-Canon, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-25 11:34:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3808870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arestlesswind/pseuds/arestlesswind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It wasn’t like like she expected to find a hot alien guy in her backyard."</p><p>J'Son of Spartax and Meredith Quill. An stranded alien prince from a distant planet and a punk rock waitress from Earth. It's not love at first sight, but it's definitely love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. lost and lonely, strange as angels

**Author's Note:**

> I expected this to take two weeks. It took two months to write, then more to edit. Whoops?
> 
> Takes place in the same Petra Quill universe as [hello world, I'm your wild girl](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3240185), but reading that first isn't a requirement. All you need to know is that I mash-up my J'son's personality and backstory with the older comics, the Bendis run, and my wishlist for the sequel. (Yes, I know Gunn said he won't appear. Grumble mutter.) And that he has Mads Mikkelsen's face, and Meredith has Sarah Shahi's. 
> 
> The spelling here is Jason, since that's what Meredith hears.

It wasn’t like like she expected to find a hot alien guy in her backyard.

If he is alien. The spaceship, pod, whatever thing didn’t look like NASA rockets or anything Air Force, but if Dad’s conspiracy theories held weight, who knew what the government was cooking up in secret with the American public’s hard-earned money. 

He didn’t look like the Roswell pictures, either. Not a little green creature, no tentacles or eyestalks. Two arms and two legs and a normal head. Face striking, from what she saw of it in the dark before he toppled unconscious from his burning spaceship to the ground.

Her ground. Bought and signed and paid. Dad couldn’t stand to live on the property anymore after Mom passed, but it was Mom’s family’s and to hell if she’s giving it up, no matter how good a piece of secluded Missouri land would go. Stubbornness runs in the Quill genes, both sides.

It’s that same stubbornness that made Meredith load her shotgun and rush outside at the sound of crashing metal. Thunder, a quake, except too close and too heavy and over in a heartbeat.

But there’s a metal sphere in her backyard, barely bigger than the width of her living room, smoking and sparking, with a glowing man inside.

Did she mentioned he glows? Entirely human, except for a halo of pulsing white light surrounding his body.

When she told Gina it’d be nice if a good guy dropped into her lap, she didn’t mean this.

Banging open a circular door and stumbling free of the sphere, glowing. Instinct kicks in and Meredith shoves the gun against her shoulder. 

And then his legs just…go out from under him. 

She waits. Trigger finger still primed, she pokes him with the barrel. No movement. 

In fits and starts, she crouches and fumbles out a pulse. Fast, ridiculously fast, but strong. Feeling out in the dark, she finds a palm-sized gun holstered to his hip, plus a curved knife in his boot. She tosses the knife and keeps the gun, tucked under her arm and pointed away from her body.

Call the cops bounced ringing from one side of her head to the other, call the cops call the cops Meredith off your dumb ass and call the fucking cops before —

Before what?

Whether he’s top secret military or Mr. Spock, it means people. Cops and FBI and news and air force and NASA and government officials in black ties and sunglasses, tearing up her property and home.

Off to her right, beneath the constant trill of crickets, an owl hoots. If she listens for long enough a bullfrog might chime in soulfully, the sound echoing up from the pond. Without seeing her eyes pinpoint the wood cottage across the lake, the only neighbor for miles.

Although she hadn’t liked to think about it, she always knew she would inherit this place - it just happened sooner than she expected. She likes to fantasize about growing old here, content and warm with perpetual dirt beneath her fingers and a house in need of repair.

She’s grown to love her family’s home more deeply than she knew was possible to love earth and sky.

“Of course this happens to me,” Meredith hisses between her teeth.

Then she began the laborious, awkward process of dragging an alien into her house.

 

***

 

Meredith Quill liked English the most in high school, not biology. Gina’s the one who went to med school, first of the family in college, over-achiever oldest child making drop-out, "once tried to assemble a punk band in her parents' garage" Mer the slacker by default.

So the stranger in her bed is…a bit of a puzzle. Unconscious, bleeding, probably with a concussion (flashlight sparking off unresponsive brown pupils) and definitely with cuts on his forehead and arms and what must be a deep gash on his chest from the blood seeping through the gray, lightly sheered body suit.

Which means she has to get the clothes off. At least the top half. 

The glowing’s disappeared, at least.

Grabbing the scissors off the sewing machine, Meredith manages to rip uneven pieces, waist to chin. Then she applies an assortment of bandages. Obviously the fall was bad, from the burning ship and everything, but the blood and pus splattering his torso makes it obvious. 

There are scars, too, beneath the blood and pus, thin and white from age.

Nevertheless, it’s a nice torso. Firm and lean, a swimmer’s body, with biceps bigger than her head and wide shoulders tapering down to a slim waist.

She’s saving the guy’s life, but she’s not _dead_.

Most of the bleeding stops with her clumsy efforts. It takes a long time, constant frantic glances to his still face, to the road outside. The arching gash from ribcage to opposite shoulder needs a surgeon’s precision she wasn’t gifted, but she applies as much pressure as her small palms can.

Her hands cramp, shaking, when she’s finished.

Drinking straight from the wine bottle doesn’t help that, but goddamn if she hasn’t earned it.

Then Meredith washes her hands and cleans out the blood clumping her hair. Breathes deep through her nose, changes into a fresh sweater she snatched blind off the hamper, and scoots her desk chair across the bedroom floor.

When he wakes mid-morning she’s sitting directly across the bed, well outside arm’s reach, ankle on her knee and shotgun pointed steady and straight.

“One move and I’ll blow a hole in that nice chest of yours,” she warns.

His reaction’s more robotic than man - blinking, disoriented, wires in his brain misfiring. He pushes upright in a swift motion only to grunt and press a reactionary hand to the bandages. More blinking as he realizes his state, wounded but tended, and his gaze snaps around Meredith’s bedroom. 

Sturdy, hard wood walls. Sporadic pictures, art and vogue and whatever struck her, to break up the look. Bedside table, a desk topped with notebooks, pencils, a swing lamp. Patterned quilt on the bed and window curtains pulled wide.

Back to her. 

When unconscious, Meredith couldn’t notice the striking cold of his stare, a sudden plunge through the ice. Fear boils at the bottom of her spine. She double checks she still has him in the sights.

“What planet is this?” he demands. His voice is rough from disuse, sort of smokey, and the words fumble as if his muscles aren’t used to forming the sounds. _Alien or European?_

“This is Earth, buddy.” Steady. Breathe. “And I ask the questions. I’m the one with the gun.”

His mouth frosts. Those eyes once more travel the length of her shotgun, her steady trigger finger, the resolve on her face.

A sharp, sudden noise erupts from his throat.

A laugh.

Indignation prickles the back of Meredith’s neck. “Something funny?”

Realizing he’s offended, he clears his throat twice, the initial attempt raw. The laugh has changed everything about him - his posture more relaxed, his expression flickering a spark of warmth.

“Forgive my rudeness,” he says. He clears his throat and speaks much more quietly, someone afraid of his own echo, and still with mild falters around syllables. “This was…not what I anticipated.”

Meredith adjusts the rifle against her foot. “What were you expecting?”

“Death. Baring that - I’m not certain.”

Meredith tenses when his hand lifts, but it’s only to press exploratory fingers to the colorful bruise on his skull. She notices details now that she can; he’s sporting a wisp of stubble, and gray discolors patches of his shaggy brown hair. If she guessed, late thirties to early forties, but in ridiculously good shape. Boxer, bodybuilder, gymnast, soldier…? Army?

_Space_ army?

His face is a mystery, though. Too sharp to touch, a dangerous leanness to his cheeks, the haggardness of a life spent too quickly and too hard.

“All right,” Meredith says with the same practiced firmness she does with her nephews and pushy customers. “So who are you and why are you here?”

“I am Prince Jason of Spartax, and I mean you no harm, Terran woman.”

“What, like, I come in peace?”

He doesn’t get the joke. “I harbor no ill will toward you or your planet. It was not my intention to land here, but I underestimated how far our ship’s energy circuits could take me…but you're not concerned with minutiae. Suffice to say, I am here due only to an emergency landing.”

“Okay. So you’re an alien. From…”

Meredith drifts off and points her index finger upward.

“As I said. I hope I did not frighten you unduly.”

“Well, it’s not every day spaceships crash in my backyard.” 

“Was I followed?”

Too startled to correct him on the not-asking-questions thing, Meredith echoes, “Followed? No. Why? Should I be worried?”

“If I were followed, we would know by now.”

There’s more out there in space than him. More people. More powerful. 

Holy shit.

Meredith doesn’t relax her arm, despite the trembling pull along her forearm. “What’s your proof? How do I know you’re not just a whackjob pilot? Or some Russian spy?”

He seems more offended at the insult to his piloting skills than the implication of Soviet allegiances. Probably he doesn’t know what a whackjob is. Or Russians.

“When you found me, was I emitting light?” he asks. He’s speaking better with practice, almost natural.

“Uh - yeah.”

“Do the people of your backwater planet possess that ability?”

An easy insult, tossed away like a given fact. Meredith’s too involved to protest. “Not…the last time I checked. No.”

She never made a point to disbelieve the possibility of life out there; she’s gone with friends to UFO groupie meetings when they asked and she was bored, and it always sounded like a cool alternative to absolute loneliness on a giant hunk of rock.

But that’s entirely different from _fucking fuck_   _there’s an alien prince in my bed._

“Okay,” she breathes out. “Uh, yeah. Okay.” She’s saying okay an awful lot.

Noticing her unease, Jason raises both empty hands but makes no move forward. Meredith still twitches, and his face shifts almost shyly. “I remember your face,” he says, tone softer than the military demands. More recognizable as human. “You saved my life. Your kindness is greatly appreciated.”

His voice is soft and his eyes are the same nice brown as his hair and he’s still shirtless and she’s pointing her shotgun at an alien what the _hell_ is her life.

Meredith releases a slow breath, and along with it most of her tension. “Oka - all right. How can I trust you?”

“You can’t.” Fear spikes hot through her stomach, but noticing her panic Jason quickly adds, “So I must endeavor to earn your trust.”

Meredith catches him once more through the sights. Jason follows the movement of her eyes.

“Here.” He presses a finger to the center of his forehead. “A head shot would be safest and clean."

Hot pressure twists her belly. “Do you _want_ me to kill you?”

Jason draws his bottom lip beneath his teeth and seems to genuinely consider. “Not necessarily,” he admits. “But I would rather meet death by your hand than by others.”

She knows he could be lying. Conning her. Meredith knows she could be a stupid girl falling for a pretty face, and she’ll wake up with a knife in her spine. 

But she also just made first contact with alien life.

She drops her aim to his thigh, a non-mortal wound.

“I’ll be honest,” she says, choosing each word. “I could have called the authorities. But I didn’t want a fuss. I’ve worked so hard to just live my life in quiet and have my privacy, and if I told anyone about you, about your ship - it’d all be shot to shit. I don’t want to be that chick splashed on the front cover of the newspaper who discovered aliens exist. I don’t know how much you know about Earth other than our name, but we’re not exactly…up to speed with your race, I’m guessing. So I need you to get in your ship and get the hell of my property.”

“I will do so as quickly as I’m able.”

“Fine. But if you try anything, _anything_ , I will call every power in this goddamn country out for you. After I fill you with bullets.”

From his slightly furrowed expression Jason didn’t understand most of those words, but her intent is crystal.

“I give you my vow as the Prince of Spartax,” he says solemn as an oath, “I will not hurt you.”

Inch by inch, Meredith lowers the muzzle until it meets the floor.

He doesn’t move. 

Okay. _Okay_.

“You hungry?” she asks faint, suddenly starving and suddenly woozy. “If you even need to eat.” 

What could be amusement warms his bruised cheeks. “All lifeforms eat in some way.”

Is he _teasing_ her?

Guy falls from the stars, acts nice, maybe flirts? Meredith shakes the fog from her head as an unwanted thought develops.

“You - don’t eat humans, do you?”

Another laugh, this one clearer and less rough, rumbles through him, and, from his wince, hurts. “Not the last time I checked.”

“Then I’ll make us something.”

“You needn’t serve me. I am a prince in name only.”

“Whatever, Major Tom. I’d fix you breakfast because, despite this thing - ” She hefts the rifle - “I’m a nice girl. Not because I’m your servant. In any case, I’m hungry, so I’m fixing myself a sandwich. You can eat it or not eat it. Oh, and the door locks from the outside." 

Meredith’s rising and half-way gone, keeping her back to the door, when his voice hooks into her spine.

“Could I know the name of my rescuer?”

Head tilted, brown eyes boring her curious, but no longer with hostility. The sun spreads across his strongly honed features.

She pauses in the doorway. 

“Meredith,” she says. “Ms. Quill if you’re nasty.”

 

*******

 

He eats the sandwich.

Then two more, because alien biology must require more food.

And it’s not so much eating as shoving them into his mouth whole and swallowing. At least he won’t judge Meredith for the five different brands of cereal and three types of potato chips in her closet.

Once he’s finished, he swings his legs over the edge of her bed. “I should assess the damage to my craft.”

Meredith’s on her feet in an instant, shotgun propped upright against her chair. “Whoa, hey. You’re pretty banged up, you need to rest.”

Jason barely grimaces as he rises. Yeah, he’s really tall. At least six feet, a good head above her. Instinctively she steps back, hand grasping toward the shotgun. His actual prince-ly politeness lowered her defenses, but she is fervently aware he could snap her like a twig with hardly any effort.

“Spartoi biology heals faster than Terran,” he explains. He gestures to the bedroom door. “May I?”

Her hand unclenches.

“Yeah. Let me just…” Unthinking her eyes roam the width of his chest. A completely unwanted flush creeps up her neck. “Get you a shirt first.”

The biggest one is Jake’s, left over one night and forgotten, and even that’s too small. But it’s better than Mr. Alien Biceps wandering around her yard half-naked. She’s not normally like this with guys. Of course she notices and appreciates, but Meredith doesn’t lose her goddamn _head_ like a teenager. Cursing as he strides out her front door, she zips her coat to her throat and hops into her boots sockless before following him out.

Watching him work, kneeling in the frost-tipped grass, pulling apart gears and wires, back muscles showing through the t-shirt fabric, Meredith itches for a cigarette. The urge flares up at the oddest times, even after over a year. (Nineteen months.)

“Do you need a toolbox, or?”

Again that surprise, faint relaxing in his stone face, as much as surprise to him as her. Maybe the beginnings of a smile.

“You’re an amusing Terran.” Before she can snap off an insult, Jason adds, “I have all the supplies I require.” His hand passes over a portion of metal slowly, leaving grease fingerprints. “But I’m afraid my craft will take time to repair.”

“You can’t go home?”

Her words flick an internal switch. Jason rises briskly, letting the tool in his hand drop dismissed to the ground. “No,” is all he says, sharp and atonal.

A story hides in just one word.

Meredith pulls her coat closer even though there’s no wind. Dead Missouri air. “I have an extra bed. A fold-out from the couch, but it’s better than the floor."

Jason glances over his shoulder, brown eyes as still as the dead air. “I have already overstayed my welcome,” he says all politician efficiency, warmth gone, but Meredith likes to think it’s a genuine kindness. Maybe he doesn’t know how to be kind without covering it with official tones. “I have invaded your privacy, and I wouldn’t impose on your life further.”

“But I can’t let you wander around. Look, superior biology or not, you’ve still got a concussion. And you should probably learn some basic stuff about Earth if you’re going to stay a while. Not to mention you don’t have money for food or a hotel, and you’d need a job to get money…”

There, now - that really is a smile. Small and brief, the barest twitch of mouth, but a rush of warmth across his sharp features 

Meredith stops talking.

“I hope one day I may repay your kindness,” is all he says.

But the way he says it and the way he’s looking at her, centered and whole instead of high above and slight, make Meredith tingle from her cheeks to her toes.

If he’s gonna stick around, she might as well enjoy it.

“You can open my milk cartons for me,” she says, even though he won’t understand. “I have to use a towel.”

 

*******

 

Meredith’s always loved to travel.

Mom and Dad’s road trips were legendary, every summer. Meredith’s feet on the dash, windows rolled down and sunglasses shoving up her hair. Marshmallows over an open fire, bare feet and hiking and bathing suits and fighting with Gina and scratching at mosquito bites, mixed language easy on their tongue because there’s no one around to judge.

Colorado, Florida, Montana, Tennessee. The outskirts of LA. Anywhere that wasn’t rolling hills corn-fed Missouri, where Meredith can dream away days and name the constellations. She memorized them at eight; forgot them all except the Big Dipper at fourteen.

They watched the moon landing live, Meredith on the floor between her parents’ feet, nose pressed to the black and white TV, and she thought: _that’s me._

But high school happened, and boys, and hippie culture. Life happened. Dreams are as easy to forget as constellation names, gone in the bright light of day.

 

*******

 

She’s pretty sure he’s not going to hurt her at this point, but Meredith still keeps the shotgun within arms reach and locks her bedroom door from the inside. Her last image of Jason is his profile at the living room window, drenched in starlight.

She dozes in fits and starts, dreams of fire in the sky and clouds tearing open.

In the morning, he’s washing the dishes in the sink.

"Morning, Major Tom,” she greets. 

Jason’s welcoming expression slides into furrows. “My name is Jason of Spartax,” he says. "I have told you."

“It’s from a song. A joke. You know, humor? Do they have jokes on your planet?”

His furrows furrow deeper, a flicker of irritation he suppresses. “We rarely indulge in frivolity.” 

Meredith waves a hand. “Forget it. Looks like you wash dishes on Spartan.”

“Spartax. The events of yesterday seemed to tire you, so I thought I would take one of your duties.”

“That’s…” Her mouth hangs open as limply as her purse at her side. “Really nice of you.”

“I mean to earn my keep,” he says, shirtsleeves of the t-shirt from last night rolled past his forearms, hands covered in soap suds.

Jake helped with the dishes when she smacked him with a wet towel, but he didn’t look this good doing it. _  
_

“Well, work.” Meredith jerks her finger toward the door. “I have to go to work. I’ll be gone a while. Um, you can help yourself to the books and vinyls. If you can read. Or like rock and roll.”

A smile curves his mouth. Those are becoming more common. “Spartoi culture is rich with literature and music,” he says smooth as a boast.

“Cool, I guess. Sorry I can’t stay, but I can’t miss another day of work.”

“What do you do?”

There goes the fleeting sense of comfort. Meredith clenches her fist around her purse handle. “I don’t think a prince would find it very remarkable.”

“All occupations hold worth.” Jason pauses while scrubbing at a particularly stubborn grease stain. “In my youth I was trained in all the arts at my disposal - farmer, poet, soldier, servant. Each bring their own benefits to the man and to his society.”

His English is flawless now, though definitely not Missourian. She’ll have to invent some passable backstory for him in case Gina drops by on one of her unexpected visits. 

Until then, his interest hangs unanswered in the air.

Meredith draws a slow breath. “I’m a waitress,” she admits. It’s fine to tell parents and friends, but she feels so damn insignificant standing in this room with mysterious extraterrestrial royalty. 

Who’s doing her dishes, because apparently he’s a decent guy.

“I don’t know that term,” Jason says, a firm hint. He expects her answer, which raises the hairs on her neck a little, but it’s not a demand formed of cruelty. 

“I - serve food to people. In a place…that serves food.”

_Jesus Christ, Quill._

“That’s an extremely noble profession,” Jason says, his voice lilted higher.

“I don’t make the food. I just take orders and bring plates.”

“Still, all beings require sustenance of some kind. The Spartoi who devote themselves to the service of others, by choice or necessity, are held in high regard.”

And Jason, Prince of Spartax, turns from the waist toward Meredith Quill, Terran waitress, and smiles soft from his eyes.

Meredith drives to work feeling the best about herself she has in months. Eight and a half grueling hours later she tosses off her apron and kicks off the heels, sliding back into her reliable tennis shoes. She rolls the window down and, hand beating the rhythm on the car door, whistles her way to the store, humming under her breath as she dumps brown paper bags into the truckbed. Then onto Goodwill, filling up a bag with some damn good deals if she says so herself.

The sun’s nearly down when she finishes the long gravel road path to the house, shoves in the clutch and yanks the brake. As she juggles bags in each arm, one of the window curtains flicks back. A few seconds later, Jason materializes on the porch.

(Not literally. Figure of expression. Although Meredith wouldn’t be surprised at this point.)

“Food,” Meredith explains before he can ask. “I’m not used to eating for two.”

Dutifully the alien prince helps her carry in groceries. Meredith’s far from the best cook, but she can throw together a decent omelette in dire times. And company is a good excuse to take Mom’s old hand-written recipe book off the shelf. She’s been meaning to.

But until then, they feast on sausage and bacon omelettes, sprinkled with pepper. Jason eats three and half the loaf of bread, but not without numerous assurances from Meredith that it’s fine, she’s not wanting for food, it’s fine.

“Do they not have food on Spartax?” she jokes, emphasizing the _x_ this time.

Jason pursues his lips like she pinched him somewhere soft. “Not enough.”

Open mouth, insert foot.

Desperate for a subject change, Meredith hooks her foot around the handles of the Goodwill sack. “I bought you some clothes. I had to guess your size.”

Brow furrowed, Jason removes one item of clothing at a time; several sweaters, a handful of plain t-shirts, lousy pants. He examines each, long fingers trailing over the worn fabric.

Meredith steels herself.

“Thank you,” he says, eyes on the last button-down, a nice checkered look to draw out his eyes.

“They’re not suitable for royalty, I know, but…”

Jason raises a hand. It grates Meredith, whether because she shuts up or because he has the gall to expect silence.

“I’m sure they will do,” he says. And finally, he looks up, those eyes pools of soft brown. “You humble me,” he says in a voice matching the eyes. “I have done nothing to deserve your kindness.”

“You haven’t tried to hurt me. You could. Very easily.”

“I have no reason to.”

“I’m starting to see that.”

“You are harmless and gentle,” he adds.

Meredith glares, waiting for the burn in her ribs to subside, before snapping, “I’m not harmless.”

Jason studies her, long and close. It feels like a mental undressing except so _clinical,_ peeling away the flesh from her bones to peer inside at everything Meredith hides. It terrifies her, kicks in her fight or flight, but she also can’t imagine what would happen if he stopped _._

“No,” he finally pronounces, “you are far from harmless, Meredith Quill.” He dips his head, caught somewhere between surprise and embarrassment. “Forgive me.”

Meredith fidgets her fork between her fingers. “Accepted. Look, I know you’re space royalty and can travel around the galaxy. But I’m not weak or stupid, and y’all aren’t automatically better than us.”

Jason’s face doesn’t so much soften as melt.

“I would be a fool to assume so,” he murmurs. 

And with that, Jason strips off the lamented Jake shirt in one smooth move. 

Not _again._

Meredith coughs quickly and focuses on an especially fascinating corner of the floor while he pulls on one of the softer knit sweaters, a dark green. But not without sneaking a quick peek. It doesn’t fit half bad - a little tight in the shoulders, but not everyone who donates to Goodwill is built like a linebacker.

“You want a drink?” she asks lamely into the silence. “I could use a drink.”

 

*******

 

Small talk with an alien is…well.

Awkward.

Not the worse small talk she’s ever endured, surprisingly (Meredith can count on both hands from waitress experience alone), but it’s difficult to find common ground.

Jason likes her choice in wine, at least. 

“Is…” _Don’t be an ass._ “Is wine also scarce on Spartax?”

Jason stares into his glass like it holds the secrets to the universe. She knows that feeling.

“All luxuries are,” he says after an internal debate. “We can rarely afford such things.”

Meredith rakes her hand through her hair. “I’m sorry,” she sighs, “I’m saying all the wrong things. Asking the wrong questions.”

“You have every right to be curious.”

“Humanity’s always been driven by our curiosity. For better or worse.”

A lull of hesitant silence.

“I have not seen my planet in years,” Jason says demurely. “My people live on scattered warships. We stop fleeing only to fight.”

Meredith watches the fire play across his somber face.

“A war?” she asks quietly.

“From before I was born.” 

“We’re no strangers to wars, either. But I can’t imagine living without a home.”

“It’s hardly living. I like to believe _living_ quantifies more than hiding while our species hovers on the verge of extinction.” Jason sighs abrupt, swallows a good amount of wine from his glass as if it could drown what he confessed.

Meredith gestures toward the bottle. “We can drink straight from there, if that’s better.”

“Unfortunately, it would take a great more than one bottle to dull my senses.” Glancing up, he smiles, that sweet, genuine, melty-thing again. She’s amazed he still has it. Has he fought to keep that alive? “You needn’t indulge me."

“I like indulging you.” Meredith winces. “That came out wrong. I mean - it sounds like you could use someone to talk to. Or not talk to.”

Jason considers. “I was traveling alone for some time.”

“I guess I’m supposed to ask how long?”

He smirks over the rim of his wine glass. “Not counting the time spent in suspended cryo-sleep, forty-two years.”

Her expression must be priceless, because he laughs. A deep rumbling in his chest, quick and done, but it runs across Meredith’s skin as amused, not belittling.

“You don’t even _look_ forty-two. Let me guess. Spartoi live longer?”

“It’s said our ancestors dreamed of thousand-year dynasties."

Meredith goes silent, staring into the crackling fire.

Jason straightens his posture on the couch. “Have I said something to offend?” 

Fuck, what’s the point in lying? “Sitting next to the member of an ancient race makes you feel kinda insignificant.”

Another chuckle as Jason settles his glass on the end table and turns his body to face her. “I’m far from ancient,” he assures. “The royal court frowned upon my youthful idealism. I was nearly sentenced to exile due to my hopeful plans for our people.”

Meredith eyes the hinted gray in his hair, the drawn lines of his face. “Define youthful,” she drawls.

She swears his eyes actually twinkle. “Taking our species lifespans into equation, I’m hardly older than yourself.”

So what’s that mean? A hundred? Two hundred? _More?_

A headache blossoms swift between her eyes.

“I need another drink,” Meredith sighs.

They split the last beer stuffed in the back of her fridge. Meredith doesn’t even remember falling asleep, contentedly buzzed but not quite drunk. When she stirs only long enough to notice, there’s a blanket over her shoulders. The fire still burns.

 

*******

********

Turns out, he cleans up nice after a shower. Overgrown hair combed back, stubble shaved with a knick here and there, smelling of her perfume. Which is oddly attractive, so Meredith pushes it far, far from her brain.

“May I inquire something personal?”

Meredith smirks without looking up from the frying pan, where an experiment in breakfast sausage merrily sizzles. “Most people say _can I ask you a question_ , but yeah. I’ve been poking into your life. Return the favor.”

“Why do you live alone?”

“I grew up in this house. My parents inherited it from their parents, who immigrated here. When my mom died, my dad couldn’t stand living here anymore, and Gina - my sister - already had a place with her kids. But I couldn’t see it go to someone else.” Meredith pokes a link of sausage with a fork, tucks hair behind her ear. “And I’d come off a bad breakup, so seclusion sounded pretty good.”

“What did you break?”

Meredith barks a laugh. She splits her attention between him and the stove. “My boyfriend. We stopped seeing each other. Romantically. Third time we’ve done that, but this one’s sticking.”

At the kitchen table, over his mug of coffee, Jason stares intense. Or, a few notches up from his normal intensity. It freaks Meredith less than it did, but still enough, because this look carries the connotation of _wanting_.

“You’re lucky it was my backyard you dropped into,” she says, diverting, “instead of a city.”

Jason smiles faint but doesn’t allow her to run. “You are remarkable, to succeed on your own.”

“I wouldn’t call it succeeding. I didn’t go to college because I was taking care of my family after Mom’s death. I work in a dead-end job, and even if I had a degree I don’t know what I’d do with myself.”

“Perhaps. But for my people, to be alone is to die. There are so few of us we’re incapable of survival otherwise.”

Finally, Meredith looks over her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she says. Means it. She’s selfishly glad her worries are making the bills and taxes on time rather than running from people who want to kill you. Luckily, Jason doesn’t seem to judge. Or at least judges subtly on the inside.

“Did you have a family?” she asks.

“My mother and father, for a time. They told me there’s a daughter training for the army, but I’ve never met her.”

“You’re a parent?”

“Only in the most basic sense. My father kept her from me, given that - ” Jason searches for a delicate phrase. “I was very fond of her mother, but she wasn’t of royal birth. That made a marriage impossible, in his eyes, and any children forfeit to my title.”

“But aren’t your people nearly extinct? That kind of shit shouldn’t matter.”

Sighing away the past, Jason produces another smile. It’s different; an obligation to Meredith. “Spartoi have always considered ourselves the most superior race, even when we weren’t. If it weren’t for the war I think most would enjoy living in isolation." 

The sausage is too close to burnt. Meredith turns off the stovetop. “Still, you must miss them,” she says, landing her tone more sincere than sarcastic.

Jason drinks his lukewarm coffee and doesn’t answer.

 

*******

 

Stumbling in the dark to the bathroom and back, Meredith squints, spots his lean outline at the open window.

“Don’t you sleep?”

Aware of her presence before she spoke, Jason angles his body toward her but keeps his eyes locked on the sky. It’s a clear, gorgeous night, the stars easy to name without the artificial light of a city. A bright moon, a light if chill breeze with the dropping temperature.

“I don’t need sleep,” he says, then clarifies, “as much as humans.”

Meredith tucks her arms across her chest and pads closer, bare feet goose-bumping on the wood floor. “Must be nice. Or not. Sometimes sleep is…” She shuffles for words. “Healing.”

Jason keeps silent.

Meredith imagines losing her family, stranded in a world unknown and unlike - maybe always emotionally stranded, but physical loneliness no longer a concept. Her heart pounds hard.

“I’m sure you can go home soon,” she says, nothing but softness. “It sucks you have to be stuck here with me.”

Minutely, she could've imagined it, Jason shakes his head.

“I’m not stuck,” he murmurs. His stillness is vast and terrifying, yet somehow calming, too; the eye of a storm.

Meredith knows she’s been complimented, probably deeper than she realizes, but the implications are too much to take in right now.

“Where are you, then?” she ventures. Steps closer, within arms length. His shadow elongates wide across the floor, nearly crossing with hers, still the smaller despite the physics of light.

Jason wets his bottom lip with his tongue. He waits for the right words, and they don’t come.

At last he settles on on, “Ask me later,” and cants his head. The moon reflects in his eyes.

Meredith rests her hand on his shoulder. He skitters at the touch, surprised, but when Meredith yanks her hand back he catches her wrist. Tight, before he remembers to be tender. His thumb can feel her pulse, thumping elevated in her ears.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, finding her eyes. “You needn’t fear me.”

The rush of panic settles thick in Meredith’s throat.

"It’s fine." She clears her throat. “You’re fine. I didn’t mean to startle you.” She pulls a face to strengthen her assurances. “My bad.”

With an almost lazy smile, Jason releases her wrist. Quickly Meredith folds her arms over her chest again, skin pricked with goosebumps not from cold.

“I startled you more, I’m afraid.”

“It’s okay, seriously.” Meredith fumbles, then throws it all out the window. “Haven’t been touched by a handsome man in a while.”

His smile arches into a smirk, the first time for days she’s seen that keenness bordering on arrogance. But it’s also humorous, and kind, and gentle and everything she’s come to associate with this alien from another planet. “I’m flattered I meet your Terran standards of beauty,” he says dryly.

“Don’t let go to your head, Major Tom.”

She muffles a yawn as she turns toward the bedroom.

“I have to ask - what song are you referencing?”

Meredith pivots on her ankle. “David Bowie,” she says, “ _Space Oddity_.” She points toward the records collection. “Listening to music helps me when I can’t sleep."

Jason nods, truly considering. “I appreciate the advice.”

Meredith manages a sleepy salute as goodnight, and lies awake in bed rubbing her wrist where his thumb lay over her blood.

 

*******

  ****

She rushes headlong, falls in love with everything and everyone, too fast, too easy, too hard. 

Always has. Always will.

 

*******

 

“Were you listening to these?"

Jason shrugs and shows his palms, looking extra nice in jeans and the green sweater she liked so much on the hanger. “I was intrigued.”

A handful of her records are stacked on the floor, player empty and ready. Cassettes, too.

Hair curling free from her ponytail, Meredith drops to her knees and sorts through. Jackson 5, Raspberries, Fleetwood Mac, AC/DC, Bowie, ELO. ELO, on the bottom of the pile, seemed the first choice; Meredith glances down at her shirt, blazoned with the words _Electric Light Orchestra_ , and discovers, to her surprise, she isn’t irritated by the blush.

Chair angled toward the player, an encyclopedia in the chair, wine glass on a coaster, a plate with cherry stems - is this what he’s done all day? Listened to her music?

"What did you think?”

“It’s…not unpleasing. Diverse. Very different from - ”

“Spartoi music? Yeah, I figured.” With a sweet but deep twinge in her ribcage, Meredith pulls _Space Oddity_ into her lap, battered and dog-eared but pristine as the day she spent too much for it. “Who’d you like most?”

Jason’s eyes drop to her shirt, then light with a mouthless smile. “The orchestra of light boasted enjoyable melodies. And I was impressed by the ferocity of the women on the run."

Runaways. Joan Jett. Meredith dares to imagine Jason in leathers. A nice black jacket. Cigarette in his pursed lips, tattoos somewhere subtle, like where neck meets collarbone..

“Tell me about your music,” she says.

“I'm sure it wouldn’t interest you."

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know, Spaceman.”

He sighs far too reluctant to be real. “From what I’ve read” - he plucks up the encyclopedia and skims quickly - “the styles are not unlike your classical period. An emphasis on string and wood instruments, with sweeping chromaticism and complex harmonies. There is little time for vocals, but when Spartoi sing, it’s always a chorus. One never sings alone.”

Realizing she’s staring, knees to her chin and record between, she puts the record aside. “I’m making you a mixtape. Some of my favorite songs.”

“You needn’t - ”

“I’m going to, J. Shut up.”

His mouth opens, momentarily forgetting who he’s speaking to, and then, fed and watered beneath the sun, curves into a smile.

 

*******

 

Next morning, she leaves early to swing by the used music store. Ted, the owner and a family friend, waves from the desk as she strolls past her customary aisles into unexplored territory.

“Hmm.” Ted clucks his tongue as he rings up the total. “That's  different. Ya feeling okay, Mer?”

“They’re for a friend.”

A friend.

They’re only compilation cassettes (and one full Beethoven because Meredith's not entirely ignorant of culture), but Jason looks at her like Meredith had hung the moon. The moon he’d flown past to get here, that reflects in his eyes under the dark sky.

 

*******

 

They settle into a routine of sorts. Meredith slaves away at the restaurant, picks up extra hours and covers shifts with another mouth to feed. Jason repairs his ship. When she’s home (i _s it still home with another person_?), Jason spins her tales of space over microwave dinners, and, when Meredith progresses up, home cooked meals. The cold endless dark, the beauty of pure silence; other cultures and planets, unimaginable sites, and Meredith listens rapt as a child on her parent’s knee.  

She drives him around the countryside, Jason enthralled by the rolling hills, the flat fields of crops, staring with fascination at cattle and tractors and barns. Maybe for how unimpressive they are in comparison. Maybe he actually finds it all beautiful.  He assists her with grocery runs, opens doors for everyone, and blinks bemused but intrigued at the appreciative looks from both sexes. He takes long, solitary walks, surprising her mortified when he appears at the restaurant at the end of her shift, backed by the sun and looking like he walked out of a romance novel. Blushing and grumbling, she slips her arm through his offered elbow and blatantly ignores the other waitress shooting her a thumbs up.

“Prince Jason my ass,” she mutters, hands clenched on the steering wheel. “You don’t need to be so _princely,_ you know,” and all he does is smirk. Shameless.

They wash the dishes and clean the house together, once Meredith’s independence reasserts itself against the charm of his chivalry. She's got to admit, four tired hands are easier than two. In return she helps with his ship when she can, crawling underneath and inside to touch consoles and hold wires. She’s proficient enough to change a tire, so she makes herself useful. 

When they clean, she blasts the tape deck as loud as the volume dial goes and sings her way through the chores. Every so often Jason watches with a finger on his lips and a bemused smile.

He reads her book collection by firelight. They drink wine under the stars, blanket beneath them on the grass. When Meredith shivers from the growing winter, Jason wraps her in his coat.

Once, wiped a grease stain off her nose.

When she comes home from work with cramped muscles and aching feet, patience sharp and head ringing, his large hands dutifully massage away the hurt, braille-like fingers brushing the arch of her foot. 

He tries to follow a recipe for pot roast, and it’s not good, like, at all, and they share a laugh before Meredith orders a pizza. 

He likes pizza. 

His smiles become easier, more natural.

She doesn’t jump at noises.

He really does like Joan Jett. The Stones, not so much. Their lyrics are insulting to women, apparently. Sometimes when she’s distracted by cleaning, he switches out her tape for something he likes better, claiming it’s only fair. 

She sticks her tongue out at him. Or, depending on her mood, flips him off. 

(No surprise, she had to explain what that meant.)

It’s not so bad, really, having someone else around. 

Especially when he makes her laugh.

 

*******

 

One late afternoon, the setting sun casting him in a violet glow as he devotes his superhuman skills to polishing a crystal drinking glass, Meredith catches him humming.  

_Ground Control to Major Tom, you really made the grade_

There are a lot of moments, but that might be the one when she knows.

Knows like watching the moon landing live. And this, she can't forget.

 

*******

 

The first snowfall happens on a Friday she’s at the restaurant, and, as usual, Meredith’s grateful for her truck and weekends. Jason’s kneeling barefoot in the undisturbed white yard when she creeps home, sifting snow through his hands and looking somewhat perturbed.

He glances up at the sound of her clomping leather boots. “What the hell?” he drawls.

Meredith smirks, face pinked and ears numb. “Snow. It’ll make sense when you read about it.” She eyes his feet. “How are you not freezing, you freak of nature?”

Inside she rummages through her cabinets for a packet of dubiously old hot chocolate mix. Near the end of a _Star Trek_ episode (Jason mocks the inaccurate technology and winces when Meredith tugs his ears), Meredith snaps off the TV and darts to the tape deck.

“I need music,” she says, restless. Spending meaningless, habitual time with him has made her become so, comfort almost reverting back to the beginning days. “Preferences?” 

Jason skims the collection from his position on the couch, head askew to see past her back. “I did enjoy Blue Swede.”

“See? I saw them in concert once with my friends. We hung around backstage and got to touch Bjorn Skifs’s hand.”

“An exciting tale.”

“Very.”

The beat kicks in quietly, background distraction. Meredith adjusts the dial. Jason raises an eyebrow. She raises the volume till it shakes in her bones. No neighbors to annoy.  _  
_

“Right,” she declares. She smacks her hands together. “You’ve avoidied it for too long, Prince Jason of Spartax. I’m teaching you how to dance.”

Jason sighs with fake irritation, but obediently accepts Meredith’s offered hand and lets her pull him upright.

“I know how to dance,” he protests without feeling.

“Alien waltzes don’t count. I mean _dancing_.”

As the drums start, Meredith moves. No rules, no coordination, sliding back and forth, to the side, around Jason and close against him; head thumping to the beat, arms gyrating. She only listens to the rhythm and what her body wants to do. The most freeing feeling she's ever known.  

Jason follows her lead by mimicking, perfectly on point to the music, but he doesn’t so much loosen up as…melt. His face shines brighter than the sun, but every movement is coordinated smoothness, not Meredith’s wild abandon. Maybe heir to the throne princes can’t get down with it.

Not without practice.

And a good teacher.

She switches out tapes fast as a DJ in search of the best dancing tunes. _Sugar Sugar, Friday I'm In Love, Bang a Gong, ABC, Come and Get Your Love._ Cheeks flushed and sweat beading, she sheds down to her tank top and Jason rolls up his sleeves despite barely losing his breath. His long hair falls over his forehead, tickling his eyes, and they dance until Meredith can barely stand from her aching feet and the night darkness stretches endless. 

“Now,” Jason says as a song ends, moving over to the tape deck, “if you will allow me to teach you in turn. Close your eyes."

Meredith huffs, hand on her hip.

"Please."

She covers her eyes. Indistinct shuffling, the needle scratching. His footsteps, quiet on the carpet. His presence, gliding closer to Meredith but she can't tell _where_ and a muscle sings in the back of her neck.

Jason lifts the hand shielding her eyes. The blackness behind her lids becomes his smile. He bows over her hand and presses his lips to her knuckles. 

“May I have this dance, Meredith Quill?”

Bowie, _Lady Grinning Soul._

Appropriately, Meredith grins so hard her face her face could split in two. 

“You certainly may, Prince Jason,” she replies in her best purr.

Slow and gracious, Jason leads her into a waltz. It’s strange at first, surrendering her weight: guided without knowing where her next step will fall, pushed back and drawn forward into another’s will. He spins her under his arm and back again only to see her smile, and his could power the goddamn world. 

It’s like all the songs and movies said. Ridiculously, stupidly, because Meredith knows better. But she feels the same rush of adrenaline fire up her blood, spark up her neurons, raise the hair on her arms, and this is why she was restless, wasn’t it? 

She knows the signs she's attracted to someone. How every innocuous motion becomes endearing by belonging to him. Terrified if he stays, likely to die if he doesn't. An overflow of water constantly thick in her mouth, pressing against her teeth to spill.

But it’s different this time. Something there’s no word for, because she’s never experienced, thrums through the air between them like Jason had hung it there. His shoulder muscles coil beneath her palms; his hand settles too large but just right on her waist.

It's - gravity. Normal. Essential.

“You know,” she says dangerously close to a whisper, “you’re a pretty good dancer.”

His smile holds as firm as his hold at her waist, back. They’ve never touched this much. When they did, he flinched.  “I trust your judgment,” he says.

And that’s when Meredith kisses him.

Everything, all at once. No tentative touches or loaded looks.

Rushing headlong.

His hands warm at her waist, his gaze stirring a languorous heat through her limbs. There are reasons not to. Meredith isn't interested in any of them.

And Jason kisses her back, after a hitch of pause. Beneath Bowie’s voice, Meredith hears an owl call outside.

He doesn’t feel different than a human. The same dry but soft mouth, a steady if quick heartbeat under her palm. He drops his grip to bracket her face between his hands, deepen the kiss into one of meaning and intent rather than a test, and her nerve endings scream to life. There's not even any awkwardness - well, the automatic weirdness that comes of putting two separate mouths together for the first time, but Jason morphs it into exploration - breathtakingly slow kisses across her lips, her chin, the side of her nose and beneath her eye. 

No one's kissed Meredith like she's worth something.

The awkwardness arrives when they slide onto the couch, all tangled limbs and enthusiasm. Meredith snickers when her foot gets pinned between the couch and his torso, and then his arms in his sweater as he tries to get her shirt off at the same time she attacks his, and only succeeds in banging his elbow against her cheek. Meredith half-laughs an _ow._  


“I understand this is bad form,” Jason murmurs, smile sheepish. “Forgive me, it’s - been some time since…”

“Sshh,” Meredith says. “Practice makes perfect. Just keep going.”

Both shirts and the buttons of her jeans, Jason kissing a pointed line down from her neck. He keeps up the attention when tugging off her jeans, shimmering onto his knees and mouthing soft into the skin he reveals, marking a continuous path. 

“Socks?” he inquires, eyebrow arched in a way that makes heat pool low in her stomach.

“Off,” Meredith insists. She wiggles her toes in his hand. “It keeps my feet warm but just feels weird.”

He obeys, not without kissing, then gently nipping the arch of her heel and Meredith sighs exasperated, “Come here,” she orders, both hands reaching, and he slides back on top of her easy this time. He situates pillow beneath her head and makes room for her her legs to bend up on either side of his waist. He’s definitely heavy, but the good kind of heavy that’s hot and grounding.

She’d just really, really like to get laid, and there’s a gorgeous alien prince who wants to help her with that.

Which reminds Meredith to hook two fingers into the waistband of his pants, aborting the kiss so his mouth lands sloppy on her cheek instead. “Anything different I need to know about…down there?”

He fucking blushes. Undefined centuries old prince, probably has his pick of women the galaxy over and enough sex at least to father a child, and he blushes like a third-grader.

“Admittedly, I’ve never been with a human woman, but I’m not ignorant of our similar biology.”

“So no spikes or claws. Or more than one.”

Jason smirks. “You wish.”

Meredith pinches a spot of tender flesh near his hip, probably due to months of eating Midwest food instead of solder-ing. “It’s a legitimate question. We might be the first of our species to…” She drops her voice near his octave. “Engage in intimate congress.”

Jason responds by burying his face in her neck and laying in a playful bite. Eloquent. Meredith denies him the satisfaction of a shriek and instead smacks his side. 

“These off,” she orders, both hands at the waistband again. “Now.”

“If you insist,” Jason rumbles somewhere near his sternum, it goes electric through her they’re pressed so close, before he drags himself off the couch and gets to business, while Meredith enjoys the view. 

Yeah, no, nothing weird down there. Just nice.

And, no surprise, he's phenomenal naked. She’s seen the top half before, but it’s new and exciting in a different context and the knowledge she’s allowed to touch.

Not for the first time, Meredith can’t fucking _believe_ her good luck.

“Are all Spartoi as hot as you?” she asks mischievously. She tosses back her hair and lifts her eyebrow, and hopes that works. She's out of practice acting hot. 

Except, she realizes, with Jason - she doesn't need to act.

“No,” Jason answers, and then he’s on her in a way that’s impossible to describe - passionate, needing, but not forceful. In high school and hookups and especially with Jake, when they were in a pattern, too often it seemed like a contest of how much they could shove her around before she protested. As if dominance made them good. Jason could snap her like a twig but he _knows,_  keeps his full strength at bay. That trained soldier’s control again, Meredith thinks, and they haven’t even fucked yet and it’s the best emotionally she’s had for years. It’s too good to push for an ending.

One hand hooked beneath her knee, the other unsnaps her bra with way too much ease and Meredith wonders what kind of bras there are in space. After a seeking glance for permission, Jason’s mouth closes down over her breast and she hitches a sigh. Relief and tension at once.

“Wait, wait…”

He stops. 

“Condoms,” Meredith says, succinct to the damn point.

Jason exhales heavily, adrenaline and more trembling his arms - fear? His long hair falls into his eyes, pupils no more than slits of dark. A beat behind him in realizing, Meredith brushes the wayward hair behind his ear.

“Thing made of rubber. Goes over…” She nudges her knee at just the right angle and Jason flinches, noise caught in his throat. “Keeps Earth women from having babies until they want to.”

Jason holds the thought in his mind long enough to process. “Fascinating,” he murmurs, and he’s shifting onto his knees and hauling her up with him just by the strength in his arms, and Meredith’s eternally grateful something other than her turned-to-water legs are there to keep her upright. Her arms snap around his shoulders, legs his waist, and Jason steps over the discarded clothes and sweeps her into the bedroom. 

The benefits of having an alien prince. She giggles into his neck, presses a quick kiss to the taut line of muscle as her bloodstream floods with happiness.

He deposits her with decent success on the bed. "Where?"

"Desk."

And then he trips his way to the desk, he _trips_ he’s so desperate. Fumbling open the drawer and searching until he yanks out the unopened box, rips open the top and looks increasingly aggravated when he’s met with individual packets.

“Here, let me,” and Meredith takes the condom from his unsteady hands, does the dirty work. She pulls him down to her, slides her fingers up his spine and kisses his mouth, his forehead, twists and opens her body to align with his. She smiles.

“Everything’s the same from here on out,” she assures.

“Tell me if I hurt you,” he breathes.

Meredith frames his face in her hands. “You won’t.”

It’s good. Really good. He’s slow and careful, rapt to the flush in her cheeks and the way her sighs arch her back and ultimately press them closer. Her hitched breaths when he tries a different angle, searching out her pleasure with the tenacity of a bloodhound. Mouth hot and wet on her breast, sucking harder when she tells him, hands pinning her hips down to the bed, which is so easy to do. He knows what he’s doing, but still he shakes with an energy more than adrenaline. Meredith feels out the muscles in his shoulders, massaging them so they bunch and unbunch, and loves that the most - the way he softens.

When she comes it’s before him and with a gasp into his mouth, fingers tangling his hair. Jason kisses out every last drop of her breath. Lightheaded, spinning, she digs fingernails into his hips and tells him  _It’s okay, go ahead._ Even then, Jason wraps his arms beneath her back and whispers the kindest things a man’s ever said to Meredith Quill in her bed.

It’s not fucking, or screwing, or an other raw verbs assigned to eager boys or greedy men. He’s made love to her, and while it’s not perfect, it’s doesn’t need to be. That’s the revelation.

And he shines. Heat and light and a pleasure so deep she could break apart in his arms.

The record's long stopped by the time Meredith hazes the world back into focus. Silence, filled only by tree branches scratching the window and a faint whistle of winter wind. The owl’s moved away. They’ve hardly moved except for comfort, Meredith on her back and Jason curled cat-like to her. Protective, or proprietary, or both. She doesn't mind.

Her palm strokes a rhythm down the length of his sweat-drying spine. His mouth finds her breastbone, the hidden curve of her neck.

Eventually, Meredith realizes she’s humming. She can’t place what. 

“So why _do_ you glow?” she asks on a sigh.

Eyes fixed to her breathing ribs, Jason’s face flushes with embarrassment until he clues in she's teasing. The dark indignation melts into a warmth, a lightness, that’s entirely human.

“Genetic experimentation,” he murmurs, afraid to disturb the atmosphere. “A comparatively useless side effect, in the scheme of things.”

“Side effect to what?”

He dips his head so Meredith sees only the crest of his skull. Draws a deep inhale and wets his lips, as if he’s a guilty child on the verge of confessing.

“Periods of great emotion.”

Meredith’s heart seizures inside her chest.

All she can say, softly, is, “Oh.”


	2. i am imprinted upon your stars

She wakes up sometime near morning with a dry throat and slinks to the bathroom as quietly as possible, but Jason’s eyes are open and watchful in the waning dark when she returns.

“You’re well?” he asks, a quiet earthquake in his chest, as if asking is invasive.

“More than.” 

Still warm and light, she rolls under the sheets with a pleased sigh. Jason’s hair, rumpled and messy, falls across his eyes. They follow her naked body with admiration, a hunger he hadn’t allowed himself to consider until it was upon him. But after all the enthusiasm of earlier he seems hesitant to touch her, fingertips skirting on the mattress away from her arm when she rolls toward his side of the queen-sized bed.

“Everything okay over there?”

Seeing her expression, Jason’s mouth curves. “As I said, before tonight, it had been some time.”

A child of war and responsibility. Meredith angles to her side, props her temple on her raised fist. “I’d imagine you’ve had a lot of other things on your mind.”

“Quite.”

When he still won’t reach out, Meredith does. Takes his hand and, simply, holds it still and steady, sliding her fingers between the gaps in his. Jason’s eyes flick to the motion, and, prompted, he opens.

“Most encounters are mandated for procreation,” he explains, “or merely to sate an urge. And until I took a wife, I would only sire bastards. A population increase, perhaps, but useless to the royal line. My skills were required in battle more.”

Meredith strokes her thumb across the ridges of his knuckles. He watches the motion with that same fascinated hunger as before.

“I had forgotten,” Jason confesses, searching for each word, “how it felt to share intimacy.”

“It’s been a while for me, too,” she admits. “My last boyfriend left a sour taste in my mouth.”

Quickly Jason shifts his attention on her face, focus keener than laser points. “Did he hurt you?”

The swift danger in his voice reminds her, very quickly, of who and what she asked into her bed. Not for the first time Meredith wonders how many people Jason of Spartax has killed on the field of battle, and if he remembers every face.

A story for each scar, chest and sides and back, one near his thigh. 

“On the inside,” Meredith assures. “High school sweetheart, on and off again, your average jackass. Not a big deal. Although I would enjoy seeing you kick his ass.” She ruffles his hair, slides her fingers through to the ends brushing his chin. Grinning, she adds, “You need a hair cut.”

The normal moment surrealizes; he’s become so _Jason_ to her now, with his half-smiles and dishwasher hands, not the centuries-older mysteriously sexy alien prince. Warm as the sun on a good summer’s day and just as strong, just as kind if fierce on her skin.

She doesn’t expect him to mock, or leave, or hurt. She feels safe.

And that’s why she leans over and kisses him, soft and slow and an entirely different kind of passion than nervous, overwhelmed fumbling. His hands rise to cup each side of her face, cradling her, and this must be what stars feel like, floating untouchable above the room. 

She takes hold of his shoulders, still hot beneath her palms, feels the shifting rotation of the muscles underneath as Jason slides her to him, a guiding hand on her hip, ever so carefully shifts the weight of his body to cover her entirely. He parts her mouth with a seeking tongue and Meredith sighs, bodily responding automatic, as if they’d done this for years: hands going to his sweat-soaked hair, weaving grips in the strands.

“Already?” she jokes to herself as much as him. She’s curious about the stamina of Spartans. Very curious.

It’s a moment before Jason responds, mouth fervently engaged. “Actually,” he murmurs, warm breath soothing across her cheeks, “I’d rather attend to you.”

Stupidly, she’s not fifteen anymore, Meredith blushes. Only a little, but she feels the heat in her cheeks and sees the smirk on Jason’s face to prove it. It’s been a while on that score, too.

“Well, if that means the same thing on Spartax as it does here…”

“I’m a soldier and a prince, Meredith,” he interrupts, sighing, and her body sings from chin to toes at her name in his mouth. “I never said I was a monk.”

With that he brushes a trail of kisses from her neck, her sternum, the curve of each breast; tickling breath over her stomach, teeth grazing her hipbone.

“In fact,” he adds, nuzzling the inside of her knee, “my people have devoted centuries to the careful study of biology.”

“That makes you the first guy I’ve slept with that did.”

 

*******

 

The second time, he breaks the bed.

One moment things are going well, even if the creaky bedsprings are funny-turned-annoying, and the next Meredith feels gravity tip, hears a crack of splintering wood, and they drop a good six inches toward the floor.

Meredith laughs until she cries. Jason stares ahead with a twitching mouth.

“Well, Superman,” she declares when she can breathe again, “you owe me a bed.”

With all his extra-terrestrial intelligence, Jason’s solution is to roll her onto the floor and pick up where they left off.

Naturally, Meredith doesn’t mind.

 

*******

 

Thwarted by the combination of cheap furniture and extraterrestrial muscle strength, they emerge long enough for food. Which is…difficult. The eating part, when Jason keeps pulling her into his lap and feeding her fruit like he was educated in seduction the same as piloting or prince-ing. And when he’s still naked and she’s wearing just his sweater. 

(She’s always wanted to do that, steal a guy’s shirt the morning after.)

Despite the calculated calmness with which he passes her strawberries grown from her own earth, so far Jason’s been a man-sized puppy about the actual act of sex. All enthusiasm and eagerness, punctuated by an intense willingness to please. Meredith guesses that’s what happens when you’ve been distracted for a century or two. No complaints.

“I have never,” Meredith admits, arms locked around his neck even though his grip on her waist is secure, “felt this ridiculous.”

Jason frowns. “Explain."  


“In a good way. I just don’t…act like this.”

He nudges a strawberry stain off her lip with his knuckle. “Perhaps you fooled around and fell in love.”

Meredith smiles at the reference, but doesn't say.

 

*******

 

The weekend ends. Monday begins. Exhausted, cheerful, and sore in all the right places, Meredith calls in sick from the couch before unplugging the landline and rolling back into Jason’s waiting arms. It feels better than a _fuck you_ , than turning into the driveway after a long day and a storm at her back. 

“Don't move,” she murmur-orders.

“Won’t someone check on you?”

“You complaining?”

“No.” He kisses her temple. “But I would hate for you to lose your position because of me.”

Without opening her eyes Meredith pets his chest fondly, runs her nails through the thick patch of dark hair. “A day’ll be fine.”

The silence hangs thundercloud low, Meredith’s attention following the path of his fingertips down and over to the tattoo on her hip. A blackbird nesting in the hollow of a guitar. When they went to the tattoo parlor together, her friends chose _all you need is love_ , so Meredith needed something different.

“My ship has been fixed for some time.”

“I know.”

He hadn’t been working, disappearing outside for hours and returning with sweat and grease stains. He’d been with her.

It didn’t feel like a goodbye, though. It felt like a beginning.

Jason dips his head down to the ink at her hip. He murmurs the shape of the words into her skin. “I don’t have to leave.”

Meredith frames his face with one hand, tilting his eyes to meet hers unwavering.

“Then don’t."

 

*******

 

She takes him to the nearest local theater. They share two dollar popcorn and make out in the back row. 

She drags him to a tattoo parlor, whispering dirty suggestions in his ear until he blushes.

They sip milkshakes and eat cheeseburgers across a booth at the ‘50s dinner Meredith’s gone to since she was 12. 

They practice until he’s mastered any kind of dancing you can imagine (Meredith’s favorite is whatever kind ends with them fucking on the floor while the record plays on).

He teaches her various phrases in Spartoi, most of them lovey-dovey. 

She cuts his hair, but not too short.

 

*******

 

“I should make arrangements. To secure my own employment.” 

_If you still want me._

Sighing, Meredith props on an elbow and kisses his rough from stubble jaw. “I mean it,” she assures. “Stay. Unless you’re needed…somewhere else.”

“There is no other place in the universe for me.”

Meredith waits. The world waits.

“And,” Jason adds, “there’s nowhere else I would rather be.”

“All right, then.” Meredith takes his hand and squeezes, a half-shake. “Deal.”

They haul his ship into the back of her truck and drive it six miles out to the barn, and don’t look back.

 

*******

 

He buys her flowers after he sees human men doing the same.

Then, a ring, after a proposal on TV.

Meredith doesn’t remember the show, people, anything. Just how Jason tilts his quizzical head, keen eyes focused on the screen but arm curled around her shoulders.

“Is this how Terrans initiate marriage?” he asks.

“Yup. How about you?”

“You could guess,” he answers dryly. “Arranged marriages. Although passionate romances are indelibly suited to wartime.”

Closing her eyes, Meredith presses her face into his chest, inhaling the cologne she bought him ( _Yes, I’m saying you smell_ ), and the laundry detergent in his sweater. “No passionate romances for the prince, huh?”

“You could guess that as well.”

She pats his leg reassuringly. “What are the ceremonies like?”

“Pompous and long-winded. The bride and groom pledge their commitment, then cut each other’s palms with a small knife. They press their hands together so the blood mingles."

“Romantic.”

“Actually, it is. If one means it.”

So after Meredith accepts the ring (a diamond bookended by blue sapphires), they cut their palms with a kitchen knife and hold hands. It’s messier than the idea, and they clean up with paper towels and have a good laugh.

In the darkness, Jason asleep around her, Meredith fiddles the ring in circles. How he knew her size she can’t guess, or how he earned the money.

“My alien prince,” she says to no one but herself. She grins, a sting in her cheeks. “My alien prince fiancé.” 

 

*******

 

“On Spartax, you would be a queen,” he murmurs. He strokes the backs of his knuckles across her cheek, hair catching as he does. “My queen. Our children would be heirs to the kingdom. You deserve that from me.”

“I know.” Meredith rests her hands on his knees. “But I like who I am. As long as you do, too.”

Always one for simplicities, Jason kisses her.

 

*******

 

When she misses her period two months in a row, it’s an accident, even though she knows better.

But she’s never seen him smile so wide, and Meredith could beam sunlight from the inside out.

 

*******

 

“That tickles,” she complains through a laugh.

Jason exhales against her belly, warm lips touching. “Fine,” he relents, but not without one less brush of his mouth over her skin, up and down, thumbs rubbing her hipbones. “But I shall spoil you and this child with everything I have.”

“Which isn’t much. You should probably get a job now. Not that I mind being the breadwinner, but I’ll need some help.”

“Perhaps an engineer.” He’s searched through books and magazines. “Or a pilot.”

“We should go sometime. Up there.”

“I would love to take you.”

“Maybe we can travel, when she’s older. Be a family of space nomads. I want to see everything you’ve seen, and more. With you.”

“She?” Jason echoes, eyebrow raised.

“That’s what you took out everything I said?”

Jason cocks a quick shrug. “Spartoi royalty usually hope for boys.”

“So you’re all sexist prigs.”

“I hope for a healthy child.” Jason props on his palms, leans up to kiss her. “And you, Terran woman. Anything else is circumstance.”

 

*******

 

She’s always been a good girl. That’s why she hasn’t told her family yet, knocked up and engaged to a man they’ve never met.

Things moved fast. But Meredith’s always loved too much, and Jason not enough, and both of them are old enough to know not to waste time when you have it.

 

*******

 

She’s flipping pancake batter and humming a made-up tune when the landline wails. Two, three rings as Meredith juggles the spatula into her left hand.

“Hello,” she says in her best waitress voice, trying to keep the wire from landing in the skillet.

“Get out of the house,” Jason orders.

“What?”

“Leave the house, Meredith,” he repeats. No explanations, sounding every bit a war commander. “Meet me on the gravel road. Where you taught me to drive. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, but…” 

“Now.”

The dial tone as good as a starting pistol. Shoes, keys, wallet, turn off the oven, and Meredith’s breaking the county speed limits. The truck kicks up a dust-storm on the gravel, head-high corn stalks on either side, but ahead she sees a figure dart fast as a blur out from the corn onto the road. She slams the break hard. Truck engine still growling, she flings open the door just as Jason’s reaching up to seize her.

He’s shaking as he hauls her down, arms wrapped hard as iron. He whispers foreign words she doesn’t know, but the tone and the repetition, the terrified hope, sounds like a prayer.

“What the hell’s going on?” Meredith demands, breathing hard, chest cracked wide with fear.

Jason inhales the scent of her hair, holds her too tight for just a moment too long, before moving his grip to her shoulders and stepping back.

His eyes are open wounds. 

“You’ve been found,” Meredith says at the same moment she realizes.

“Meredith - ” 

“Shut up.” She drops both hands from his shoulders and steps out of reach. “Shut the fuck up.”

Jason closes his beautiful, bruised, pale mouth, and stands still.

Adrenaline rattles her raw. Blood swings to the back of her head, her knees weak, hands driving nail marks into her palms. Meredith shudders out a long, halted breath, draws in a slower second and shoves her hands through the wind-blown, slept-in mess of her hair.

Maybe coincidence, maybe fate, maybe the activity stressed her. But the baby chooses that moment to kick. 

A light fluttering, easily mistaken for nerves.

The other shoe’s dropped.

It was never going to last, was it?

Stupid. _Stupid._

Meredith clears her throat. “How did they find you?” she asks, as clear and steady as she can.

“Gareth’s scouts. They’re searching every planet for biological anomalies, even as distant as here.”

She doesn’t ask about the scouts. If they were alive, Jason wouldn’t be here.

“And you stick out like a sore thumb among the rest of us.” The words emerge from her mouth bitter, laced with misplaced anger. Jason’s the only one here to strike out against.

The baby kicks again, smacking irritability. Meredith automatically holds the bump of her stomach, and Jason flinches at the action, fists his hands to keep them from reaching out.

“What do you need to do?” she asks.

She already knows, but it’s not unavoidable fact until he says it.

“I must leave. Not for myself - if word reaches Gareth of my presence here, he will hunt us. He will kill you to spite me, and kill our child to end my line. No one else could hold claim to the throne." 

“I don’t care about your fucking throne.”

“Neither do I,” Jason snaps, the only time he has ever raised his voice to Meredith. In a flash, she pictures the betrayed son, the hardened killer. How did you kill those scouts? “If it makes me a traitor to my people, then so be it. Damn them all. Damn my legacy. All I want is this life, with you.”

For some reason, no reason, Meredith’s beyond reason, that makes her even angrier. “So you’d let him tyrannize and torture your people?” she demands coldly.

“I thought you wanted me to stay.”

“Of course I do.”

“I chose you. The only change is…”

“Now he could find me.”

“Yes. I must leave.”

“Not an option,” she spits. “We take the ship and hide somewhere else.”

Desperate for her to understand, Jason reaches for her shoulders again. Meredith smacks his hands away while they’re still in the air. The expression that shadows his face pains her worse than a physical blow.

“My ship only fits one,” he informs, clipped and cool statistics.If heartfelt begging won’t work, the merciless diplomat steps in. “And it would be a death sentence to send you into space alone, unguided, without provisions or a way to care for the child. It must be me.”

“Build another fucking ship, then.” 

“There’s no time. When Gareth’s scouts fail to report, he’ll know. And even if I could take you, we would always run.”

“We’d be running as a family.”

“That is why I beg you to stay. I couldn’t protect you from him. Not from his armies or his jealousy.”

Her eyes are burning. Meredith shoves her fingers against each tearduct, sucking in corn-stenched air to keep the tears at bay.

“So how are you going to survive, huh?” To her surprise, she doesn’t sound angry anymore. Just…resigned. “Aren’t you just leaving me to go martyr yourself?”

And Jason’s voice has soothed in response to her change, in lieu of a caress. “I’m a skilled pilot,” he murmurs. “If I leave now, I can try to manage as far from Earth as possible before one of his scouts find me. Knowing you are safe, I can gather resources. An army. To even possibly have a chance.”

“How long would you be gone?”

“Until it’s done.”

Instead of reaching out again on equal footing only to be rebuffed, Jason kneels on the ground. Carefully, giving her plenty of time to yank away, he wraps both hands around Meredith’s wrists. Against his palms, Meredith can feel her pulse slamming against the confines of her skin.

“You are what I treasure, Meredith Quill of Earth,” says Prince Jason of Spartax, face upturned into the sun. “Live. For me."

They drive to the barn in silence.

 

*******

 

The ship groans, whines and begs to sleep even after the touch of Jason’s DNA. The sound is a tightening fist around Meredith’s throat, something she truly let herself believe she’d never hear again. 

“Take this,” he says unceremoniously, passing her his gun. The weight’s strange in her grip, too light compared to a shotgun and too small, smaller even than a pistol.

“How romantic.”

“I reprogrammed the settings to accept only your DNA. It’s far more effective than a bullet.”

Meredith tucks it under her arm.

Once the noises settle into a steady thrum, Jason sits motionless in the cockpit.

“This is for you,” he tells her, in a voice so stripped of emotion it’s foreign. He could be the goddamn robot from _Lost in Space_. “Not me. Not my people. To keep you and the baby safe.”

She never considered this would happen, and thus she’s completely unprepared. Just a woman, barefoot and pregnant, waiting to be left at the curbside with the trash. Same as always. Meredith can hardly breathe and she tells herself it’s the stagnant air in this old barn, they were going to clean it up some day, maybe buy some horses, till the fertile earth of her grandparents into a living farm, she had _planned_ that - 

“It has to be for your people,” she tells him. “They need you just as much as we do.”

The ship’s too tall for her to reach him, so she supports her side against the steel and tip-toes up as far as she can. Jason leans from the cockpit and snatches her hand fast as a snake. The engine rumbles beneath their grip.

“There’s a king in you,” Meredith says softly. “A kind, great man. An angel made of light.” She manages a weak smile at the joke. “I believe in you, Spaceman. Even if no one else does.”

For what it’s worth, Jason smiles. Already gone, a shadow imitation the same as when he’d first fallen into her yard.

It’s more than Meredith can stand.

“Wait. _Wait_.”

She rushes inside and tosses apart her drawers until her fist closes around plastic. She jumps onto the ship’s wing and hauls herself up with both hands, before shoving the tape into Jason’s palm.

“I made it for you,” she explains in a rush. “It was supposed to be a gift.”

Jason glances down. Meredith had slapped on a yellow label and written in clear, easy words, _Awesome Mix Volume 1._

“I have no way to listen,” he says, and for the first time since she’s known him, he sounds helpless.

“Invent something.” Meredith grabs the back of his neck, fingers twining hard. “The songs remind me of you,” she whispers. 

She kisses him hard. Too hard, teeth and tears. Jason’s hold nearly breaks her spine.

 

*******

 

Skirt billowing around her ankles, Meredith watches him go from the porch steps, bare feet in the grass.

“Ground Control to Major Tom,” she teases into the comm device. “Everything all right up there?”

A rough sound that could be static or could be laughter. “You would,” Jason sighs. His voice sounds eerily nearby, through a phone line, even though the ship’s pin-sized from below. 

“Hey, it’s the last chance I get to do this.”

The most appropriate chance.

“When I come home,” Jason promises, “you can say it then.”

It’s the way he says _home_. She fills up, a balloon fit to burst, love and hurt and rage and so much hope she could choke.

“The last time I’ll say it,” she promises back.

The crackling feedback from the comm fills the silence, the birds chirping merrily away at the blue sky. _Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why, you had to hide away…_

For some reason that’s what brings the tears, a tidal wave rolling up in her throat, and fuck this fuck no she isn’t going to let them fall. Not a one, not until he’s gone and not while there’s still hope and a fetus growing inside her womb. A husband, a bun in the oven, living the fucking dream. Meredith bites her lip until she tastes copper, bitter down her throat. She lowers the comm near the ground to hide the tell-tale sound of her throat clearing, the heaving breath like she’s hit the surface after near drowning.

_I’ll remember you this way_

“Why don’t you sing it for me?” 

Jason’s high and tinny, bad reception on a country road.

Meredith licks her chapped lips.

“Am I sitting in a tin can, far above the world - ”

_Why does it feel like she’s granting the last wish of a dying man?_

“Plant Earth is blue, and there’s nothing I can do.”

“It is blue,” Jason interrupts fast and quick, as if telling her this is more important than any other three words. “I can see it.”

“You moron,” but Meredith’s grinning. “Of course it’s blue. I know it’s blue.”

His laugh sounds far, far away. Above the atmosphere. She can’t see the ship anymore, even when she cranes her neck and shades her eyes with a hand, peers past the sun and colors.

“Don’t stop,” he says. “Please.”

Meredith rushes, notes flat and melodic beats lost. “Though I’m past one hundred thousand miles, I’m feeling very still. And I think my spaceship knows which way to go. Tell my wife I love her very much…”

The comm hisses. 

Silent.

Very carefully, she places it on the grass near her feet.

“She knows,” she sings to herself.

He’s not there to see her, and he can’t hear.

 

*******

 

They agreed not to exchange _I love yous_ , because it felt too much like goodbye.

This is the greatest regret of Meredith’s life.

 

*******

 

She only screams once.

It’s not so bad, at first. Really. Meredith pretends she’s a housewife with a husband away on some business trip. Her own vacation at home, unparalleled quiet and independent privacy. All she wanted and fought for, right?

She takes misfortune on the chin, Meredith Quill, looks it right in the eye and keeps on her way with hope in her heart and a song on her lips.

It doesn’t feel real, for one thing. He’s outside, tinkering with the ship. He’s still in bed, waiting for her to roll over and smack him with her elbow.

The door stays closed. The quiet aches. The bed is cold. No glasses or books out of place. The dishes pile in the sink until she pushes up her sleeves and blasts the Stones so loud her ears ache.

_Graceless lady, you know who I am_

He’s gone.

_you know I can’t let you_

Jason.

_slip through my hands_

is

_wild horses_

gone.

_couldn’t drag me away_

She only screams once.

 

*******

 

There were many questions about a mystery boyfriend. There are even more about the shape of her belly.

People tsk their tongues. Didn’t think she was that kind of girl. (Like being _that kind of girl_ is a sin.) Coworkers at the restaurant recommend doctors if _you don’t want to keep it_. To his credit, most of her dad’s anger is Jason-based: demanding his name and his hide. For his youngest daughter, baby of the family, it’s quiet sighs, long glances, kind hands squeezing her shoulder.

He wants her to move home. So does Gina, so there’s family to look after Meredith and the baby.

Jake bangs down the door. He demands if's his his. She explains, in small words, the scientific impossibility. She wonders if the anger is directed at her for leaving him, or himself for losing his chance.

“I’d take care of it, Mer,” he slurs. How many beers, four? Six? He holds his liquor until he doesn’t. “You. I’d marry you, babe.”

“I can take care of myself.”

She locks the door.

 

*******

 

Five months to the day a small orb lands in the grass at her feet. She’s on it better than at Christmas, grabbing with both hands. It makes a trilling noise in response and the top pops open, lighting up a holographic display barely bigger than her hand.

He’s alive. He looks the same. He flicks the device with a finger to make sure it’s working and Meredith laughs, beaming and wiping her eyes clear.

Jason tells her what she already knows; he’s safe, he loves her, he misses her. He isn’t sleeping, which Meredith can tell from the lines of his face. The slow pattern of his words; he’s thinking each one. She can’t see where he is, device held too close to his face, but it’s not his ship. 

At one point an authoritative voice calls his name. Jason snaps back something incomprehensible, likely in Spartoi, before turning back to the orb.

“I know I have no decency to ask,” he murmurs, soft as sweet nothings in their bed on a lazy morning. That doesn’t make it easier, but he tries. And it helps to hear the sound outside her memories. “But if you would answer when you can - tell me everything. The monumental and the minutiae. You may be quite far along by the time this reaches you.”

He pauses around the thought _goodbye_ ; smirks when something better occurs. “Major Tom to ground control,” he says dryly, "signing off.”

Meredith watches at least three times, etching his cadence away in a vault between her ears. Her own message must be a good ten minutes of rambling nonsense, like how the baby kicks in response to music. He might not be there to reply, but it still feels tangible. A presence in the air, a shadow at the door. 

She christens the orb with a broken wine glass and tosses it underhand into the sky. It purrs its tiny engines and zips away.

It’s hard, surrendering what may be her last memory of him, but her world is bigger than only her baby’s father. Has to be.

He showed her it was.

 

*******

 

The pregnancy is hard and long, baffling her Midwest doctors. As is the birth, hard and long, epidural worthless. Meredith cries desperately even when she promised herself she wouldn’t be one of those hysterical women on TV. In her less lucid moments, she yells (whispers, maybe) his name. He should be here, she hates him, him and his fucking war and his fucking uncle and that he ever landed in her fucking backyard, Jason, Jason.

But she hears that first wailing, gasping, angry scream, and it’s okay. The doctor proclaims it’s a girl, relief shaking his voice, and they tend them both separately before pressing this perilously tiny creature into Meredith’s shaking, chilled, sweat-soaked arms, so weak she can barely hold the head upright.

“Hello, you,” Meredith whispers.

She cries again, much softer. Petra yells and yells until she’s fed, then some more for indignity’s sake, and everything’s _okay._

(Petra because Meredith needs a good solid Bible-belt name, not one chosen in a drug-induced hippie haze that her daughter will hate her for. And Peter was Meredith’s favorite apostle, the frightened doubter.)

Maybe in apology for nearly ten months and forty-two hours, Petra’s a good baby. Quiet, only crying for food and attention, curious eyes blinking wide at the bright, loud, strange new world. She pokes at Meredith’s nose and clenches her tiny fist hard around Meredith’s dangling hair, babbles a non-stop commentary of nonsense once she’s old enough. They create a rapport in their own invented language; Meredith doesn’t need a universal translator.

As soon as she forces her family away for a few blissful hours of peace, Meredith removes the bedroom floorboard with one hand and holds Petra in the other. The orb’s been waiting.

She makes the message quick. He may not have much time.

“Petra, meet your dad,” she hushes, kneeling on the wood floor. “Jason, meet your Petra. No, sweetie, that’s not - not a toy. But I guess it won’t hurt anything, you don’t have teeth.”

Petra harrumphs when the orb spins out of reach back into the sky, so Meredith hangs the planets above her crib.

“I know you’re just playing with the pretty thing,” Meredith says while she watches Petra bat intrigued at the dangling charms, each one tinkling a different key against each other. “But get used to those. When your daddy comes back, that’s our home.”

 

*******

 

The year Petra’s born, they invent the Walkman.

 

*******

 

She’s not lonely. Never lonely. The Quill girls are a team from the start, and when she can’t talk to anyone about her waiting days as the army wife to an intergalactic soldier, she talks to Petra. Tells her everything before she can understand, lying outside on blankets and pointing out the stars. 

Plus, time goes fast when it’s marked by diapers and first steps and first words ( _Bowie,_ of course), by height marks in the kitchen and princess dresses and chases around the yard with toy ray guns.

She picks up what extra shifts at the restaurant she can, bringing Petra with her on late nights ( _Why isn’t she home with her father?_   the older, married customers ask beneath their nose. _He’s away for the day,_ Meredith lies through her toothy smile). She cleans the house and keeps the yard and pays the bills, starts cleaning hotel rooms on the weekends for the extra dollar. She makes good meals for herself, weans Petra off baby food onto vegetables and corn grown in their earth. (She didn’t plan the garden. It happened, and it reduces the rest of the world to white noise.) They read _The Little Prince_ and blast records so loud Petra shrieks with delight, jumping up waving her chubby arms. Her baby girl head-bopping in the car is possibly the happiest moment of her life. 

When Petra’s old enough to appreciate them, Meredith makes a copy of the tape she gave to Jason. The songs of her childhood, the songs of her love for Petra’s father. She even keeps the excellent title.

Motherhood fits her better than she thought it would, when it was an abstract concept.

 

*******

 

A simple conversation takes months. Sometimes years.

“I don’t know if you like the name Petra,” Meredith tells the orb. “But, too bad." She flips him off for good measure.

The first words from Jason’s mouth is just a heavy sigh, seeped in fondness. “I can hardly quarrel when I’m not there. What does it mean in your tongue?”

“ _Stone._ I guess she’ll be stubborn.”

“Of course she will. You’re her mother.”

Out of curiosity, Meredith looks up her own name in the baby book Gina loaned her.

_Ruler._

( _On Spartax, you would be a queen._ )

 

*******

 

On the outside, she’s sacrificing her own meals for Petra’s hungry mouth, because no one told you how fast finances disappear when two need to survive. But they’re making everything they have of it. 

_Ooh child, things are gonna get easier._

It’s a good life, when you’re on the inside.

She’s only ever lonely in the sense of Jason. There’s an absence sitting on her chest, a specifically-shaped hole he left, and it suffocates heavier with every breath, some days. Other days it shrinks, lost in the glow of Petra’s smile, or thins into a hard, sharp thing during cold nights, darkened and brittle.Does he even realize how long it's been? _Years for me is a goddamn blink for you._

The mornings after those nights are usually when an orb slides trilling though her open window.

The love of her life looks so much older even on a pixellated hologram, graying hair and hollowed out eyes, a fresh scar cutting across his nose and left cheek, and Meredith’s ache is a dagger between her ribs. Her heart weary with the weight of him, and his weary with the weight of his world.

But Jason is smiling. No matter her mood, no matter the ghosts on his path, the messages from incalculable light years away greet her with a smile.

There are many, in response to Petra crawling and talking and waving hi on command, or even her failed attempts. They may be years delayed, forgotten on Meredith’s side, but it doesn’t matter.

Because when he saw what they made together for the first time, the Emperor of Spartax tried three times to speak before surrendering to stammers. 

“She’s - " Emotion running him ragged, or fear of being overheard? Both? Fuck, it doesn’t matter, there’s that smile Petra inherited along with his eyes. “She’s…” he whispers again, faltering.

“I know, sweetheart,” Meredith soothed to an echo that couldn’t answer.

(Petra is everything and anything and what they’re fighting for, on their separate wargrounds.)

 

*******

 

It’s the best kind of spring day. Petra’s six and sent home from school for another fight. Her girl’s cost for defending a younger, smaller boy from the school bullies is a week of suspension. 

That’s the key, here. Petra wasn’t the victim; she inserted herself into an existing fight to protect someone.

Chest tight with pride despite herself, Meredith applies a fresh bandage to the cut on Petra’s nose and says, “You’re so much like your father, you know that.”

“I don’t want to talk about dad,” Petra mutters surly, eyes on the ground.

Once Petra realized Daddy’s coming home was a nebulous promise, she turned from fantasies to hatred. It chips away parts of Meredith’s heart, but she can’t fault her. Petra doesn’t have the memories to remind her why she hangs her body, growing older each day, on the dream of settling a planet of their own.

Sighing, Meredith kisses Petra twice on the forehead for good measure. Petra’s scowl slowly relaxes, spreads down to her sneakered toes.

“Just take care of yourself, okay?” Meredith pleads, making sure to disguise the motherly concern. Petra can handle bullies, but fearing for her daughter’s life is automatic.

“I _know_ , Mom. Jesus H.”

“You’re six, babe. Don’t say that.”

“Grandpa says it.”

“Well, Grandpa doesn’t have a mouth filter.”

With the day to themselves, they eat PB&J sandwiches and drink homemade lemonade on the porch. In the hammock, Petra lets Meredith read a comic over her shoulder, the newest issue of a swashbuckling space adventure. Meredith finger-combs through Petra’s messy dark hair, every strand Meredith’s own.

A shadow eclipses the sun. Just like that, one second to the next, and the air whips cold. Instantly Meredith leaps to her feet, scanning back and forth between the sky and the front yard.

A ship’s descending fast, gray and steel and sleek, burning up fuel and burning the grass beneath. Nearly as big as the house, built for war with weapons on all sides and the shimmering light of a shield generator.

“Mom?” Petra asks unsure, hands fisted in Meredith’s shirt.

_Not like this._

“Get inside, sweetheart.”

“But Mom - ”

“ _Get inside_!”

With no more explanation Meredith spins hard and fast, shoving Petra ahead of her into the house. Thank god she left the screen door open for the good weather thank god thank god. The ship’s guns fire as soon as Meredith leaps to cover Petra’s cowered body. A chunk of the door vanishes into thin air, a little pop of air as it’s eaten whole.

No time to think, no plans, Meredith seizes Petra and drags her bodily through the house to the back wall, running a zig zag pattern as best she can around furniture and walls. Petra stumbles to keep up, not asking, just going, and Meredith throws the back door open with the strength in her shoulder, doesn’t even notice the pain, kicks open the cellar door attached to the outside and pushes Petra onto the steps.

“Sweetheart,” she gasps, breath a hundred paces behind her, “sweetheart, listen to me. Listen. No matter what happens, you stay down here. Make yourself as small as you can and go hide in the tightest corner, okay? Be quiet. Count your breaths, just like in a storm. These people want to hurt us, and you can’t make them stop.”

Petra’s sobbing, hysterical, confused, terrified tears and Meredith’s hands, clasping her face, are soaked with them.

“Mom,” Petra whispers.

“I know. I know, baby girl. But no matter what you hear, stay down here. Pinky promise me.”

Petra nods and there’s no time to seal the contract with the sign. Meredith shoves her daughter down into the tornado cellar, slams the door and locks it shut and hears Petra’s muffled whimpers.

“Sshh,” Meredith hisses as loud as she dare, so close her mouth touches the wood, and then she’s up and in the house again, barreling with no grace into her bedroom, the back of grandma’s old wardrobe.

She kills the scouts. Spartoi or Arigunian, as if it mattered. Three in her house and however many in the ship, with the gun Jason left for her protection. Everything, even the ship, evaporates with that tiny, innocent pop of matter.

She considers moving, changing their names and telling no one. But if scouts can find them, the only thing left is to stand her ground.

Protect Petra. Keep Petra alive. Petra, Petra.

( _How? Could their technology tell Petra was only half human? The gun?_ )

Maybe she should have told Petra the truth. _An ancient alien race wants to kill you because of your father._ But between mother’s words and sounds unseen, Petra’s still young enough to believe a burglar lie.

Meredith’s head is already filled end to end with spaceships and ray guns and unexplainable death. Her daughter shouldn't, not so young.

Let Petra dream them as toys. 

 

*******

 

She doesn’t tell Jason. He has enough to worry about.

 

*******

 

As the years wear on, she hurts. Not every day, because there’s Petra, of course. And Dad, and Gina, and her closest friends, who treat Petra like the precious Star-Lady she is.

But when Petra’s asleep and the guests are gone, the tilled ground of the farm and the quiet night air, the vast silent sky she can’t touch or breach, Meredith’s haunted. The hollow pain of waiting, the inescapable exhaustion in her bones. Headaches, joint aches, deep coughs that should shatter her ribs. Blood in her throat, coming up with the spit.

Some nights, perilously quiet, she lifts Petra’s Walkman out of her backpack and lies in bed listening, headphones over her ears.

She always puts it back in the morning. Petra never knows it’s moved.

 

*******

 

On Petra’s birthday, Meredith buys her baby a better pair of headphones (foam, adjustable, great sound), and extra batteries. Petra looks up from behind her hair ]like her mother hung the moon.

“Thanks, Mom,” she says softly. She runs her mouth off a mile a minute, except for when it counts. Like Jason.

Everything feels good.

Hours later, the doctors find a tumor in her lung.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with me, folks. I hope my intense, way too long, pulled out of my own ass idea/backstory was worth your time. 
> 
> There might be more yet in the Petra Quill universe. I'm certainly bouncing plenty of ideas. In the meantime, I'm gonna cry about Meredith Quill a lot.


End file.
